GUNDERSON: Random Tokyo Soil Samples Would be Considered Nuclear Waste In The US!

While traveling in Japan several weeks ago, Fairewinds’ Arnie Gundersen took soil samples in Tokyo public parks, playgrounds, and
rooftop gardens. All the samples would be considered nuclear waste if found here in the US.This level of contamination is
currently being discovered throughout Japan. At the US NRC Regulatory Information Conference in Washington, DC March 13 to March 15, the NRC's
Chairman, Dr. Gregory Jaczko emphasized his concern that the NRC and the nuclear industry presently do not consider the costs of mass evacuations and
radioactive contamination in their cost benefit analysis used to license nuclear power plants. Furthermore, Fairewinds believes that evacuation costs
near a US nuclear plant could easily exceed one trillion dollars and contaminated land would be uninhabitable for generations.

This is the real reason no one has leveled with the Japanese people, and the world, concerning the true scale of this disaster.

What really can be done about it???

Freakin' mess....one we will still hear about and deal with for the rest of our lives and the lives of our grandchildren and beyond.

I am writing to you in reference to an unbylined Associated Press story that appeared in a number of newspapers earlier this week with the headline,
"Vt. consultant Gundersen: Tokyo soil is N-waste."

The claim made in this article by Arnie Gundersen of Fairewinds Associates that soil collected in Japan could be classified as radioactive waste does
not seem to have been independently verified, and hence should not have been published by the AP in violation of long established journalism
standards.

I believe a correction is in order.
In order to classify an object or a substance as radioactive waste, it takes more than simply triggering a Geiger counter. In the United States, the
U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission has explicit guidelines. U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission licensees who need to dispose of items that have become
irradiated -- in the case of nuclear power plants this often means water purification filters and resins, tools, protective clothing and other plant
hardware -- have two options. In the first case, you can ship the waste to a certified disposal site.

However, there are cases where the levels of radioactivity are so low that you can actually petition the NRC to dispose of it in an alternate manner.
However, if someone who is not a regulated licensee finds materials that have been irradiated, different regulations come into play.

In the case of Japan, the levels of radiation found beyond Fukushima Prefecture -- and that includes the Tokyo metropolitan area -- are so low that
our resident health physicist says that there are no regulations that would require the soil there to be disposed of. Furthermore, without seeing the
report from the lab that Gundersen used, it would be impossible for any radiation protection professional to completely evaluate his claims. If a
radiation protection professional with 40 years of experience in our industry wasn’t able to verify Mr. Gundersen’s claims, then how was your
reporter able to do that?

In none of the articles that I have seen in various newspapers is there any specificity provided to readers on radiation levels—simply broad claims
attributed to Mr. Gundersen. Furthermore, there isn’t any evidence in the articles that your reporter attempted to verify Mr. Gundersen’s claims
with any independent third parties. According to the Society of Professional Journalists Code of Ethics, reporters should, "Test the accuracy of
information from all sources and exercise care to avoid inadvertent error." In this case, it seems clear to us that the reporter failed to do either,
which makes us wonder why it was ever published. We would also dispute your characterization of Mr. Gundersen as merely a "consultant on nuclear
issues."

Mr. Gundersen has a long history of working as an anti-nuclear activist, and has a direct financial interest in seeing plants shut down, something he
is already working actively to accomplish while in the employ of the state of Vermont as it seeks to close the Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Plant.

According to an article that appeared in the Burlington Free Press in February 2010 and is featured prominently on Mr. Gundersen's own Web site, he
and his wife Margaret have been paid up to $47,000 by the state to provide just these sorts of consulting services.
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They read, "Any time a question is raised about any aspect of our work, it should be taken seriously." If the AP truly stands by that statement,
one that was first committed to paper by your organization in 1914, you should immediately review Mr. Gram’s reporting and issue a correction to
every AP member newspaper that ran the story.

Originally posted by amraks
Maybe if the whole countries toxic, They can all leave Japan and live in another country?

Thats what they are playing at, we will wait to people get sick then play some nation will feel sorry for us and take us under there wing..

Crazy thought, but could happen.

I heard that they are building nice homes in the US so that millions of people can relocate from Tokyo. Near San Francisco, I think. That was what my
cousin said. And that they could all move there and they would help them move with military transports and that they were already looking at new tech
jobs for them, and everyone would live happily ever after and not die a slow death of radiation poison.

If you voted for me I would do it, but no one wants to vote for me, so I guess they probably will just let everyone fix their own mess. And actually
its worse in Washington State because that is where they used to enrich all the uranium and that is where they would probably want to move the
Japanese people because actually most people are not very nice. They only do things for money these days. Sad really.

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